Liquid Space Dodger - New "endless flyer" style ga

Announce (tech) demos or games releases

Moderator: Mask of Destiny

Post Reply
ComradeOj
Interested
Posts: 27
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2015 4:18 pm
Contact:

Liquid Space Dodger - New "endless flyer" style ga

Post by ComradeOj » Mon Aug 17, 2015 4:41 pm

Hi, everyone!

I started working on this a few days ago, I'm pretty happy with it now and think it's ready for release. It's one of those games where you have to fit your character between gaps in a wall. Kind of like flappy bird.

The game is meant for NTSC, but is semi-optimized for PAL. The resolution and timer are designed to work with either PAL or NTSC, but the gameplay and music is slower with PAL. I guess this makes the PAL version of the game easier, since you have slower obstacles and more time to react because of the extra vertical resolution.

The music is from Arkanoid. It has an almost tetris like quality to it. It's repetitive, but super catchy. I arranged the tune with insturments from different Genesis games. Here is the order:

1. Buzz bass+PSG
2. Comix Zone/The Ooze
3. Sonic 2
4. Kid Chameleon
5. Turrican
6. Columns
Repeat

The effects on the background graphics are pretty cool, in my opinion. It's done by feeding a sine wave into the horizontal and vertical scroll registers. The rotation is pre-rendered, and consists of 18 frames. I was able to leverage the Genesis's hardware sprite collision detection for this game. The hardware detection is fairly limited, but it was enough, and way faster/easier than a software scheme.

The Control scheme is a bit odd, and was designed that way because the game was originally meant to use a paddle controller. I looked online for info on the paddle, and it seems that the 2600 has some extra hardware specifically for the controller. I asked on spritesmind, and it looks like it's impossible to make an Atari paddle work on the Genesis using software alone.

You move left and right with the D-pad, and you hold either A, B, or C to set your movement speed. You can take four hits before it's game over. Your color indicates how much life you have left.

Here's a quick rundown:

Image

In-game screenshot:
Image

Video:
I kind of sucked, since it's hard playing on the nomad screen, but through my camera's view screen. The farthest I've made it is to level 51.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bxmqbm_OfU

Download link:
http://mode5.net/download/Liquid%20Spac ... on%203.bin <-- Newer version, many improvments
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-uZnR ... sp=sharing

Final thoughts:

The game doesn't work on the Exodus emulator for whatever reason. Well, it runs, but the collision dectection doesn't work. It worked fine in Fusion, Gens, Regen, and most importantly on real hardware.

The order that the spikes fall is random, but the first one is always the same.

Liquid Space Dodger runs at twice the frame rate of most XBO/PS4 games
Last edited by ComradeOj on Fri Jan 08, 2016 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

nolddor
Very interested
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2013 1:35 pm
Location: Spain

Post by nolddor » Thu Aug 20, 2015 5:32 pm

Really Nice! I'll try it

PD: A Ingame Pause could be a nice feature xD

Post Reply